Scripture: Exodus 33:12-23 and Psalm 99 • Isaiah 45:1-7 and Psalm 96:1-9, (10-13) • 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 • Matthew 22:15-22
The Gospel this week is the account of Jesus telling religious leaders wishing to entrap him to give to Caesar that which is Caesar's and to God that which is God's. In "God in the Heartbeat of Life," and in her Reflections on the passages from Exodus and 1 Thessalonians, The Rev. Kate Huey asks "Can you feel the tension?"
Tension between a transcendent, Other, Holy God in all his glory, and God who is immanently present. In our soft and ego-centric, self-help culture, with all the hypes and distractions, have we lost a sense of awe and the sacred? Have we made a God, projecting on God our wants, needs, and desires for prosperity, seeing what we want to see, hearing what we want to hear? Are we shopping for a church which satisfies our consumer appetites, or one which nurtures, feeds and gives away what we have? Can you feel the tension?
In our desire for material things, objects and objectivism, have we lost the ability to see beyond what we expect to see? Were the Israelites the chosen people because of their own "specialness," or was it more than themselves? Relationship building between a holy God, Transcendent and yet present, and us. Can you feel the tension?
This week's scripture is full of the glory of God, his awesomeness, and yet we see God's presence in Jesus being tested by religious authorities. Can you feel the tension? We are soon approaching Advent, and what Rudolph Bultmann calls "History and Eschatology: The presence of eternity" (the meaning of history), as the sacred breaks into our humanity in the coming of the Christ (the eschaton) ... as a helpless child, needing human sustenance to live, and live as one of us. Can you feel the tension?
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